Wouldn't that really be arguing for the existence (and use of, and influence of) fanon, and its role in the group interpretation of the work?
I'm not sure whether I'm following you correctly here. Let me see whether I can try to unravel this a little, and with any luck you'll at least be able to tell me whether I've completely missed your point.
If you're suggesting that we might be looking at two classes of fanfiction, one that requires only a solid working knowledge of the original source, and a second that requires a knowledge of fanon and fandom writing conventions in general, I'm not sure I'd disagree as a matter of substance. (Although I'd probably argue in that second case that one could just as well characterize the second type as being fanfiction where fandom itself was the, or one of the, primary sources, so that there was no material difference between this kind of fanfiction and the kind where all a reader needed was a working knowledge of the primary source.)
I think this fanon-influenced category may be an area where by both temperament and experience I'm ill qualified to say much of anything. Most of my direct experience has been in a tiny fandom where we just plain didn't develop much of any fanon (or at least, not much I'm aware of). With very rare exceptions, all you'd need to read anything the fandom has produced is the source material itself, and the exceptions are unusual enough that they carry author's notes saying, "I was riffing off Jane Fangirl's story XXX when I wrote this, and you need to read that to understand this, here's where to read it if you haven't." Which, I gather, is not quite the same phenomenon as what you're talking about. Especially in light of what you say here:
Seems to me this is also where you get into the power of conventions, in genre: that fandom itself, just by nature of being human and social animals, cultivates conventions just as much as any genre.
I think it's the very conventions you're referring to that were at the heart of my earlier pathetic whimpering about being not as much like the other children as I might wish. I really, really would rather have less by assurance of where a story is going -- not that I want the structure to feel wrong and forced when I get to the end, but unless a writer has the kind of gift that makes the oldest and most conventional of forms new again, I'd much rather not be too certain. Indeed, one of the things I come to noncommercial fiction for is the way it bypasses the gatekeepers whose preference for the familiar tends to limit the directions in which commercial work can go. And if everyone's in an inn and eating stew and talking about the Big Bad, well, I hope to God someone's given me more than that. Because otherwise, as you say, we've all been to this show already; why on earth would we want to sit through it again?
All of which means simply that I haven't read very much of what I think is probably a vast body of fanfiction that does a lot of what you're talking about here: to the extent I find it I bail from it early in the work. As I think about various discussions I've had, though, I'm inclined to think you're right based on evidence as well as pure logic. I'm remembering someone -- it may have been melannen -- trying to explain the appeal of celebrity RPF to me, and finally saying something like, "I just really, really love coming-out stories, there can never be enough of them for me."
And sure enough, there's your thesis illustrated right there (again, if I'm following you), because what she was telling me was that to understand the AI story I had failed to get at all, a reader needed to know both the basic AI canon and to know the fanon conventions that form the coming-out story form (or the mainstream conventions that inform it, plus whatever fanon conventions modify it?). Without both, you're not going to be able to see what the work means for its intended audience.
But whether I've followed you correctly or not, I'm more and more inclined to think that you're absolutely right about the "affirmational vs. transformational" framework being too limited to really account for the variety of work being done both inside fandom as we know it and outside of it. And since "derivative works" is the base term we have, perhaps the best strategy is to accept it and go for reclamation? I'm suddenly struck by an annoying sense that musicians have some really excellent terminology for this that we might borrow, but there's a hole in my brain where the relevant words are supposed to be. I'll have to go check The Memory of Whiteness and see whether I can find them.
Ah. Fixed.
Date: 5 Jun 2010 02:59 am (UTC)I'm not sure whether I'm following you correctly here. Let me see whether I can try to unravel this a little, and with any luck you'll at least be able to tell me whether I've completely missed your point.
If you're suggesting that we might be looking at two classes of fanfiction, one that requires only a solid working knowledge of the original source, and a second that requires a knowledge of fanon and fandom writing conventions in general, I'm not sure I'd disagree as a matter of substance. (Although I'd probably argue in that second case that one could just as well characterize the second type as being fanfiction where fandom itself was the, or one of the, primary sources, so that there was no material difference between this kind of fanfiction and the kind where all a reader needed was a working knowledge of the primary source.)
I think this fanon-influenced category may be an area where by both temperament and experience I'm ill qualified to say much of anything. Most of my direct experience has been in a tiny fandom where we just plain didn't develop much of any fanon (or at least, not much I'm aware of). With very rare exceptions, all you'd need to read anything the fandom has produced is the source material itself, and the exceptions are unusual enough that they carry author's notes saying, "I was riffing off Jane Fangirl's story XXX when I wrote this, and you need to read that to understand this, here's where to read it if you haven't." Which, I gather, is not quite the same phenomenon as what you're talking about. Especially in light of what you say here:
Seems to me this is also where you get into the power of conventions, in genre: that fandom itself, just by nature of being human and social animals, cultivates conventions just as much as any genre.
I think it's the very conventions you're referring to that were at the heart of my earlier pathetic whimpering about being not as much like the other children as I might wish. I really, really would rather have less by assurance of where a story is going -- not that I want the structure to feel wrong and forced when I get to the end, but unless a writer has the kind of gift that makes the oldest and most conventional of forms new again, I'd much rather not be too certain. Indeed, one of the things I come to noncommercial fiction for is the way it bypasses the gatekeepers whose preference for the familiar tends to limit the directions in which commercial work can go. And if everyone's in an inn and eating stew and talking about the Big Bad, well, I hope to God someone's given me more than that. Because otherwise, as you say, we've all been to this show already; why on earth would we want to sit through it again?
All of which means simply that I haven't read very much of what I think is probably a vast body of fanfiction that does a lot of what you're talking about here: to the extent I find it I bail from it early in the work. As I think about various discussions I've had, though, I'm inclined to think you're right based on evidence as well as pure logic. I'm remembering someone -- it may have been
And sure enough, there's your thesis illustrated right there (again, if I'm following you), because what she was telling me was that to understand the AI story I had failed to get at all, a reader needed to know both the basic AI canon and to know the fanon conventions that form the coming-out story form (or the mainstream conventions that inform it, plus whatever fanon conventions modify it?). Without both, you're not going to be able to see what the work means for its intended audience.
But whether I've followed you correctly or not, I'm more and more inclined to think that you're absolutely right about the "affirmational vs. transformational" framework being too limited to really account for the variety of work being done both inside fandom as we know it and outside of it. And since "derivative works" is the base term we have, perhaps the best strategy is to accept it and go for reclamation? I'm suddenly struck by an annoying sense that musicians have some really excellent terminology for this that we might borrow, but there's a hole in my brain where the relevant words are supposed to be. I'll have to go check The Memory of Whiteness and see whether I can find them.